Blue’s Too Cool for Me
I can’t do cool. When I try, it backfires.
In an attempt to be a bit wild and crazy, I polished my fingernails blue. I was just admiring how indeed cool I was when I dropped the closed bottle of polish, it hit the coffee table and cracked and landed on my new area rug. A beautiful pool of bright blue with sunburst splashes now decorated the sandy colored rug.
I immediately wiped the coffee table off with a very light dab of nail polish remover on a white cloth. Remarkably, the polish came off without causing any damage.
But how on earth I would get all of that polish off the carpet I did not know. I picked up as much as I could with paper towels and then began dabbing at it with terry towels soaked in nail polish remover. After about an hour, I thought it best to stop until I talked to my carpet cleaner. They said to continue what I was doing.
Three bottles of nail polish remover, a handful of rags, and two full days of elbow grease later, nearly all of the polish did indeed come up. You can still see a hint of blue that would probably come out if I keep working at it.
One of the things I did find out along the way is that not all nail polish removers are the same. Cutex nail polish remover worked fine, Ulta’s house brand did little-to-nothing, but the Studio 35 Beauty acetone nail polish remover purchased at Walgreens worked very well.
If you ever need to clean up nail polish from your carpet, be sure to test a spot before proceeding and place a folded cloth under the carpet to prevent the polish or remover from damaging your floor or carpet under the rug you are cleaning.
Here are a few other household cleaning remedies for removing stains that I found in my old Haley’s Hints book:
Mud– Rub a slice of raw potato over the stain. Soak the item in cool water and then launder.
Grease – Rub cornstarch into the grease stain.
Ball Point Pen Ink – Remove with rubbing alcohol.
Lipstick – Rub toothpaste in the mark and launder. You can also try hairspray.
Perspiration– Soak the garment in a bucket of warm water with one cup of vinegar for one hour.
Tea and coffee – Spray the area with hairspray. Rub with a bar of soap and rinse in cold water.
©2013, Mary K. Doyle